


replace the noise with silence instead

by CallicoKitten



Category: Fargo (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Hypothermia, M/M, Psychopaths In Love, Serious Injuries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-16
Updated: 2017-07-16
Packaged: 2018-12-02 22:28:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,177
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11518794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CallicoKitten/pseuds/CallicoKitten
Summary: Yuri is still and pale against the snow. His eyes are closed, his left ear is gone. There is frost in his lashes. Meemo stands above him for a long while, considering. Then he bends, finds a pulse, weak and erratic against Yuri's fevered skin.





	replace the noise with silence instead

**Author's Note:**

> this wasn't meant to be so long or so mushy but then again, fargo wasn't supposed to give me another pair of dysfunctional hit men to pine about

Meemo sits on Yuri's bunk and swings his legs, listens to the sound of Varga's slow fingers on the keyboard above his music. It makes him wince. Not the music, the slow steady clacks as Varga types out whatever it is he's typing, the heaviness of his breathing. The way it whistles sometimes between Varga's broken teeth.

He'd turn up his music but he doesn't want to. They're waiting.

He thuds his heels against the ladder, taps out a rhythm. He doesn't dance in the truck, there's not much room for it and after a while Varga gets irritated with the squeak of Meemo's shoes against the concrete. Doesn't say as much but Meemo sees it in sighs, in the slope of Varga's shoulders. Yuri would smirk and call him Kevin Bacon, like either one of them have ever seen Footloose.

Maybe Yuri has. Meemo would have no way of knowing.

He thuds his heels against the ladder. Varga pushes back from his desk briefly, twists to look back at Meemo, his meaning clear. Meemo stills his legs, pushes himself further onto the bunk.

They wait.

\---

Varga doesn't it say but as the hours tick by, as days slide into nights; he decides Yuri isn't coming back. Sighs and stands up, passes a hand across his eyes.

Meemo pops one of his ear buds out, chooses his words carefully. "Should we look for him?"

"What you do in your own time is of no consequence to me," Varga says, matter-a-fact as always. "However, for now we must concentrate our efforts on Mr Stussy."

Meemo nods.  

\---

He finds Yuri's stupid wolf hat first, pinned to a tree by a crossbow bolt. For a moment he thinks this must be a message, slightly tacky for Meemo's taste but the kind of thing that would have men like Stussy and Sy wetting themselves. Then he spots the trussed up hunter, riddled with bolts.

He smirks a little, tries to imagine Yuri's expression, Yuri's rage. It must have been an accident, caught Yuri off guard.

He leaves the wolf where it is, finds Golem next, puts together a picture in his head from the snapped arrows and bloody snow, trudges off after the blood trail.

Yuri is still and pale against the snow. His eyes are closed, his left ear is gone. There is frost in his lashes. Meemo stands above him for a long while, considering. Then he bends, finds a pulse, weak and erratic against Yuri's fevered skin.

He rolls his eyes. Hefts Yuri up and over his shoulder walks back to the car.

\---

There's a half-bottle of vodka in the backseat. Meemo slides off Yuri's jacket, unzips his hoodie, tears off a long strip of Yuri's t-shirt and soaks it in the alcohol, presses it against what's left of Yuri's ear.

Yuri doesn't move. Doesn't shift, doesn't flinch, doesn't hiss in pain. There is not even a flutter of eyelashes.

Meemo frowns, bends to check Yuri's pulse again just to be sure, presses two fingers to Yuri's throat. Sure enough there's a weak beat there, he wasn't imagining it.

He cleans up the wound as best he can. It's hot to the touch, red and swollen at the edges. Maybe it would have been better to leave him out there. Let him slip off alone and bloody in the snow but -

He thinks about the frost in Yuri's lashes, swallows against the lump in his throat.

He sighs, zips Yuri's hoodies back up. He leaves Yuri's hideous jacket on the floor of the car. "Asshole," he tells him, slamming the car door and turning the heat up high.

\---

Varga wrinkles his nose when Meemo returns. "No sign of the girl, I take it?" he asks. Nods when Meemo shakes his head and adds, "If you are intending on keeping him here do be sure to clean up after him."

Meemo nods again, dumps Yuri on the bottom bunk and retrieves the med-kit from the trailer's small bathroom. There is the gentle snick of the door as Varga leaves. Meemo breathes out.

\---

Yuri stirs this time when Meemo scrubs at the wound with antiseptic ointment, mumbles something thick and heavy and tries to shift away. He's too weak to resist, too sluggish. Meemo grits his teeth. Doesn't like this.

He covers the wound with sterile dressings, sets about getting Yuri out of his snow-damp clothes. He's seen Yuri bare before, exposed. The trailer is small after all and Yuri has no qualms about strutting around in only a towel after a shower, about dressing with his back to Meemo, to Varga but this is different. Yuri's skin is too pale, red and hot where the blood flow is starting back up.

"You're an idiot," Meemo tells him when he's finished, like it was Yuri's idea to chase the girl through the frozen forest and end up one ear down. He's lucky he hasn't lost any fingers or toes.

Yuri doesn't move, doesn't stir.

Meemo rolls Varga's chair down from the office and sits by the bunk, googles things like ' _wound care_ ' and ' _hypothermia_.'

\---

Varga says nothing when he returns to the trailer, only taps impatiently at the back of the office chair. Meemo stands, lets Varga roll the chair back towards the computer, waits for Varga to say something.

Eventually, Varga turns to look at him briefly. "You're fine, Meemo," he tells him. "I have everything firmly in hand for now at least." His gaze slides smoothly off Meemo to land on Yuri. "I shall let you know if things change."

Meemo nods.

\---

The first time Yuri wakes, his eyes are wide and unfocussed, his cheeks are flushed. He mumbles something in Russian. Meemo frowns. He speaks Russian, and several other languages besides, but Yuri's words are rough and slurred together, too jumbled for Meemo to decipher.

He stills when Meemo leans over and presses a hand to his forehead, checking his temperature. His eyes flutter shut. He's warm again, too warm. Meemo sighs, sets down the book he'd been reading on Yuri's chest and stands.

Varga says nothing as Meemo passes by to retrieve the first aid kit. Nothing as Meemo strips the dressing, cleans the wound, redresses it, resettles into his chair, picks the book back up.

When he eventually stands all he says is, "I shan't be needing you tonight." And leaves. Meemo stares after him.

There is snort from Yuri's bunk. "If he fires you," he says, in halting English. "You could always become a nursemaid. You are surprisingly gentle."

Meemo aims a kick at the mattress; Yuri's laugh is weak and raspy. "Fuck you," he says but Yuri's smirk unfurls something warm in Meemo's chest. Something like the world feeling righted again. Equilibrium restored.

Yuri is out again in a few moments, breathing slow and easy against the pillows.

\---

The second time he wakes he grunts, "Water."

Meemo looks up from his phone. Waits.

Yuri rolls his eyes, " _Please._ "

Meemo reaches down to the bottle he's been keeping by the bunk, unscrews the cap and holds it up to Yuri's lips. Yuri's hands come up to try and grasp it, his movements are clumsy, uncoordinated. Meemo swats them away.

"I am not a baby," Yuri protests, flushing angrily but eventually he relents, lets Meemo press the bottle to his lips, drinks deeply. "Enough," he says, eventually and Meemo screws the cap back on, sets it back down by the bunk.

Yuri exhales, closes his eyes. For a moment Meemo thinks he has gone back to sleep but then his eyes open once more, "The girl?" he asks.

Meemo shakes his head.

" _Bitch_ ," Yuri grunts. He looks down at himself; back up at Meemo, "My jacket?"

Meemo smirks. "I burnt it."

Yuri glares at him, "Asshole."

"I could have left you to freeze to death out there."

Yuri seems to consider this for a long while then he huffs, settles back into the bunk and closes his eyes.

"I thought I was," Yuri says, very softly when Meemo's gone back to  playing on his phone. "I had dream - I think, there was a man and a bowling alley."

Meemo looks at him.

"He had message for me," Yuri says, his words are running together again. "It was not pleasant."

He is quiet for a moment, then, "My hat?"

Meemo sighs.

\---

He goes back for the stupid hat.

\---

A week more and Yuri is recovered. Things go back to normal. They don't talk about it but the first time they fuck afterwards Meemo is rough, rougher than usual.

Sucks mark after mark into Yuri's skin, bites his lip bloody, presses bruises into his hips, yanks his wrists, yanks his hair, scrapes his nails over the fresh pink scar tissue at the side of Yuri's head. Needs him to know, needs him to understand that _this_ isn't the reason Meemo came to find him in the forest. Needs him to know this is meaningless, a means to an end, a way of staving of boredom.

Needs him to know that he doesn't look at Yuri and see frost in his lashes sometimes, still sees him still and pale and flushed with fever.

Yuri hisses, moans and curses in fragmented Russian, arches in to Meemo's every touch, every thrust. He doesn't know if Yuri knows Meemo understands everything he's saying.

Afterwards, they lie pressed together in the bunk. Varga could be back any minute but Yuri doesn't move off of him, lies heavy on top, head resting on Meemo's chest. He's still and quiet but not asleep, his head tilted in such a way that Meemo can feel the brush of his lashes every time he blinks.

He doesn't say thank you but he leans up and kisses Meemo before he returns to his bunk, licks into Meemo's mouth slowly.

He doesn't understand.

\---

"Stay here," Varga says to Yuri when the girl calls.

Yuri huffs angrily, shows more restraint than Meemo had expected. "They took my _ear_ ," he hisses.

Varga looks at him blandly. "Should have moved quicker then."

Yuri grits his teeth, growls, clenches and unclenches his fists.

"You see?" Varga says. "That kind of anger is blinding, leads to mistakes. Mistakes we cannot afford."

He takes a step towards Yuri, leans up on his toes. "We are in the home stretch, my friend," he grins. "And your part in our little orchestration has come to an end. Clean up, make it so we were never here. You will find your share in your account. Go. Enjoy it, Yuri. I'll be in touch."

Yuri exhales.

Varga turns back to the rest of them, claps his hands. "Come along, come along," he says, striding off. Meemo hesitates a moment, meets Yuri's gaze briefly. Doesn't say anything. Turns his music up loud as he follows Varga out.

\---

Meemo wakes up in a motel room, dimly lit. When he closes his eyes he hears the echoes of gunfire, the sound of the elevator doors clunking shut. He's been in this business a long time, knows the only real certainty in this line of work is that no one is indispensible.

His head is heavy, muddled.

He becomes aware of things gradually, bandages around his chest, a tightness as he breathes in and out, the muffled voices of a television set in the next room. Yuri sits beside him on the bed, back to Meemo, wiping his hands with a blooded cloth.

"You scream like girl," he says, when he realises Meemo's awake.

Meemo looks at his bloody hands, at the cloth. On the nightstand there's a strip of gauze, bloody tweezers, bullet fragments. _Surmise,_ Varga says in the recess of his memories. Meemo doesn't remember it, doesn't remember much beyond the first bullet hitting him but he doesn't want Yuri to know that.

"You weren't exactly gentle," Meemo says.

Yuri laughs. " _Gentle,_ " he echoes. He sets aside the cloth, waves his hands in front of Meemo's face. "You see these? These are man hands. Not delicate little girl's hands like you have."

"I've had no complaints from you."

Yuri smiles, turns back to finish cleaning his hands. "The girl is dead, the man with her got away. Varga is gone."

Meemo hums. Doesn't really understand why Yuri is telling him this until Yuri looks back at him. "Should we kill him?"

 _He left you to die,_ Yuri is saying, Meemo realises and maybe Meemo should have known this was always going to be an eventuality. And it's stupid. Ridiculous, even. Meemo wasn't built to do this, he thinks, has never had the correct wiring but he catches Yuri's wrist anyway, thumb stroking across Yuri's pulse point and Yuri looks at him, so damn attentively.

Meemo shakes his head. Not because he's scared but because Varga is meaningless to him. He doesn't hold a grudge, Varga owes him nothing just as Meemo owes Varga nothing. "Not worth it," he says.

Yuri nods, slides his wrist down through Yuri's grip to tangle their fingers together. He squeezes Meemo's hand. "Okay," he says.


End file.
